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拍品专文
Arguably the most prolific of the pioneer Singapore artists, Cheong Soo Pieng’s immense body of work is easily recognised despite the diversity of the forms they take. A tireless innovator, Cheong’s numerous experimentations in style and medium drew inspiration from both Eastern and Western painting techniques and styles throughout his career, driven by his longstanding desire to capture the essence of the spirit of the region through its people and its landscapes. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Cheong Soo Pieng’s artistic style had reached its peak, culminating in the iconic figurative types we associate with most of his later works. Painted in 1977, the same year as Cheong’s first visit back to China since setting foot in Singapore thirty years prior, Ploughing marks an especially crucial moment at the height of the artist’s career. The painting is an exceptional work in the artist’s oeuvre for its rare and unusual composition in his mature style, consolidating the various elements borrowed from Eastern and Western art that he had mastered in the years prior, and prefiguring the visual language that would typify his artistic output of his later years.
Formally educated at the Xiamen Academy of Fine Art, Cheong was trained in the techniques of traditional Chinese ink painting but was also exposed to popular Western schools of thought. However, it was only upon arriving in Singapore in 1946 did his paintings enter an entirely new phase, perhaps driven by the new visual stimuli of the tropics that excited and inspired his early works. Despite his responsibilities as a full-time lecturer at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Cheong continued to develop his practice incessantly, travelling around the region in search of inspiration from his immediate surroundings. In 1952, along with fellow pioneer artists and colleagues from NAFA, Liu Kang, Chen Chong Swee, and Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong made a historic field visit to Bali in search for a more localized subject matter within the Southeast Asian context. This trip resulted in an enduring fascination with the elegant indigenous women of Bali and the idyllic rural landscapes that would serve as a constant source of inspiration for his works in the years to come.
Early works saw Cheong mastering the medium of oil paint, adopting a brighter ‘Fauvist’-inspired palette in his works with thick brushstrokes of vibrant colours and a tendency towards cubism in the handling of his subjects. By the late 1970s, Cheong’s painting began to see a distinct refinement in style. Sketches produced on his 1977 trip to Sarawak paralleled the developments that were to be perceived in his later works. No longer looking like his life drawings of the 1950s that aimed to capture every detail on paper, his sketches strove to convey his ideas concisely with an economy of line and a respect for negative space. Likewise, his matured style saw a refinement in the strong but delicate line work used in his paintings, showcasing a renewed interest in traditional Chinese ink painting techniques no doubt inspired by his trip back to his homeland. His bold palette made way for subtle, earthier tones that harmonised the scene, preferring burnt umbers, sienna browns, and deep viridian greens to convey the lush verdure in his chosen landscapes. What might appear to be a pointillist rendering of the surroundings is in fact a result of Cheong’s fondness for the local batik fabric and its intricate, repetitive patterning. Usually a key feature of the sarongs that wrap Cheong’s figure, the motifs escape the textile to imprint themselves on the verdant thicket framing the painting, suggesting the dappling of sunlight on the leaves, gently moving in the warm tropical wind.
Cheong Soo Pieng perceived the ladies of his paintings as the paradigm of local indigenous beauty. His most iconic works of his later years often feature pairs of ladies poised on a rock or seated in stillness on the forest floor, visually reminiscent of Chinese artist Lin Fengmian’s paintings of beautiful courtly ladies, heavily stylized to enhance their best features. The qualities that would come to define the mature stages of Cheong’s works are soundly evident in Ploughing, as he casts their beauty in the gentle lines that form their delicate faces. Large almond lidded eyes, defined noses with full lips, their faces bear serene expressions of contentment with their lives. Instead of the stillness expected of Cheong’s later ladies, the women of Ploughing are engaged in their daily activity, perhaps pounding the day’s harvest of rice after ploughing in the fields.
Similar in spirit to Lin’s depiction of the women of the Fishing Village, Cheong elaborates on his characteristic stylisation of traditional village femininity, celebrating the everyday woman and the spirit of sisterhood that bonds their agrarian community. Diligent in their duties, an air of tranquillity holds them still for Cheong’s capture of the tableau, peered through the thick shrubbery that frames the scene. With their eyes pointed towards their task, we imagine the hushed tones of their voices as they share this communal time together – almost as if we are intruding on a very private moment shared between the three ladies.
Where the Western painters played with tonal variation and lines of perspective to breathe three-dimensional form and depth into the objects and scenes they painted, the Chinese artists were able to suggest distance and depth within the pictorial plane with the apparent vacancy between each flat layer they placed in their compositions. Wu Zhen’s Fisherman describes this concept concisely, with its overhanging cliff cutting diagonally across the top left hand corner of the composition, given form against the untouched space of the paper, and the small figure on the boat on the water. The viewer clearly perceives the distance between us and the fisherman, with the cliff that serves as spatial separation. Wu Guanzhong does similar in his placement of colour, allowing the streak of paint to act as the marker of depth and distance for the viewer’s eyes. Cheong employs a similar method, painting the wreath of greenery that surrounds our view as a flat layer and placing it a distance into the foreground, separated from us by the strip of gravel on the bottom edge of the painting. The artists enables us to see his vision, by establishing a sense of distance between the viewer and the subject with each purposeful layer that builds the scene.
Ploughing firmly establishes Cheong Soo Pieng position as one of the most exceptional and pioneering artists of his generation, in its elaboration and sophisticated execution of the key themes that captured Cheong’s attention in his early years in Southeast Asia. A testament to Cheong’s mastery of his craft, the painting is a triumphant realization of his artistic ambition at the height of his career, as he perfects the harmony of multicultural techniques that has served to define his unmistakable and truly unique artistic style.
Formally educated at the Xiamen Academy of Fine Art, Cheong was trained in the techniques of traditional Chinese ink painting but was also exposed to popular Western schools of thought. However, it was only upon arriving in Singapore in 1946 did his paintings enter an entirely new phase, perhaps driven by the new visual stimuli of the tropics that excited and inspired his early works. Despite his responsibilities as a full-time lecturer at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Cheong continued to develop his practice incessantly, travelling around the region in search of inspiration from his immediate surroundings. In 1952, along with fellow pioneer artists and colleagues from NAFA, Liu Kang, Chen Chong Swee, and Chen Wen Hsi, Cheong made a historic field visit to Bali in search for a more localized subject matter within the Southeast Asian context. This trip resulted in an enduring fascination with the elegant indigenous women of Bali and the idyllic rural landscapes that would serve as a constant source of inspiration for his works in the years to come.
Early works saw Cheong mastering the medium of oil paint, adopting a brighter ‘Fauvist’-inspired palette in his works with thick brushstrokes of vibrant colours and a tendency towards cubism in the handling of his subjects. By the late 1970s, Cheong’s painting began to see a distinct refinement in style. Sketches produced on his 1977 trip to Sarawak paralleled the developments that were to be perceived in his later works. No longer looking like his life drawings of the 1950s that aimed to capture every detail on paper, his sketches strove to convey his ideas concisely with an economy of line and a respect for negative space. Likewise, his matured style saw a refinement in the strong but delicate line work used in his paintings, showcasing a renewed interest in traditional Chinese ink painting techniques no doubt inspired by his trip back to his homeland. His bold palette made way for subtle, earthier tones that harmonised the scene, preferring burnt umbers, sienna browns, and deep viridian greens to convey the lush verdure in his chosen landscapes. What might appear to be a pointillist rendering of the surroundings is in fact a result of Cheong’s fondness for the local batik fabric and its intricate, repetitive patterning. Usually a key feature of the sarongs that wrap Cheong’s figure, the motifs escape the textile to imprint themselves on the verdant thicket framing the painting, suggesting the dappling of sunlight on the leaves, gently moving in the warm tropical wind.
Cheong Soo Pieng perceived the ladies of his paintings as the paradigm of local indigenous beauty. His most iconic works of his later years often feature pairs of ladies poised on a rock or seated in stillness on the forest floor, visually reminiscent of Chinese artist Lin Fengmian’s paintings of beautiful courtly ladies, heavily stylized to enhance their best features. The qualities that would come to define the mature stages of Cheong’s works are soundly evident in Ploughing, as he casts their beauty in the gentle lines that form their delicate faces. Large almond lidded eyes, defined noses with full lips, their faces bear serene expressions of contentment with their lives. Instead of the stillness expected of Cheong’s later ladies, the women of Ploughing are engaged in their daily activity, perhaps pounding the day’s harvest of rice after ploughing in the fields.
Similar in spirit to Lin’s depiction of the women of the Fishing Village, Cheong elaborates on his characteristic stylisation of traditional village femininity, celebrating the everyday woman and the spirit of sisterhood that bonds their agrarian community. Diligent in their duties, an air of tranquillity holds them still for Cheong’s capture of the tableau, peered through the thick shrubbery that frames the scene. With their eyes pointed towards their task, we imagine the hushed tones of their voices as they share this communal time together – almost as if we are intruding on a very private moment shared between the three ladies.
Where the Western painters played with tonal variation and lines of perspective to breathe three-dimensional form and depth into the objects and scenes they painted, the Chinese artists were able to suggest distance and depth within the pictorial plane with the apparent vacancy between each flat layer they placed in their compositions. Wu Zhen’s Fisherman describes this concept concisely, with its overhanging cliff cutting diagonally across the top left hand corner of the composition, given form against the untouched space of the paper, and the small figure on the boat on the water. The viewer clearly perceives the distance between us and the fisherman, with the cliff that serves as spatial separation. Wu Guanzhong does similar in his placement of colour, allowing the streak of paint to act as the marker of depth and distance for the viewer’s eyes. Cheong employs a similar method, painting the wreath of greenery that surrounds our view as a flat layer and placing it a distance into the foreground, separated from us by the strip of gravel on the bottom edge of the painting. The artists enables us to see his vision, by establishing a sense of distance between the viewer and the subject with each purposeful layer that builds the scene.
Ploughing firmly establishes Cheong Soo Pieng position as one of the most exceptional and pioneering artists of his generation, in its elaboration and sophisticated execution of the key themes that captured Cheong’s attention in his early years in Southeast Asia. A testament to Cheong’s mastery of his craft, the painting is a triumphant realization of his artistic ambition at the height of his career, as he perfects the harmony of multicultural techniques that has served to define his unmistakable and truly unique artistic style.